Conclusion
As Christian Nold (2009: 10) writes, the future of emotion-based mapping is still being written. ‘Will it’, he asks, ‘become mind control … revolution, public consultation or brain augmentation?’ We argue that it will likely become all of these and more as emotion mapping is used to respond to public, state and commercial desires to create ‘a tangible vision of places as a dense multiplicity of personal sensations, which we are not normally aware of’ (Nold, 2009: 10). Like Nold, we believe a participatory, bottom-up process of identifying communal matters of concern that begins with personal sensations and ‘suggests the possibility of an alternative body politic of place’ (2009: 10) is the key starting point. The concept of ‘affective atmospheres’ has been useful for this initiative since we found that young people reflected on far more than their own personal emotions when invited to create emotion reports; they considered the emotions and experiences of others as well as the feeling they and others derive from places, objects, events, memories, experiences and nature. Our invisiblecity project demonstrates a broad need for more research into the way young people feel in urban space. Through the platform, we can see that the nuanced and insightful voices and visual representations of young people are able to convey affective atmospheres. In understanding participants as agents, emotion-mapping projects like invisiblecity are able to capture stories of the city that reflect participants’ political engagement with urban spaces. As this article highlights, our project not only rendered visible and amplified voices and perspectives not always heard (especially in relation to policy and planning), but it also allowed for a renewed and critical connection between young people and place.
